“Earl Gray Moment”

What tea would you like?” asked the waitress as she flipped open the top of a tea box in front of us.

“English Breakfast” said I AND Mark, almost in unison.


I looked at Mark and said “English Breakfast?”

Why Choose Hope

“Delhi Burning” screamed the headlines of a major newspaper. It was November 2nd 1984, and riots plagued Delhi, after the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards. When the news of her assassination broke, mobs of Hindus filled with rage took to the streets in Delhi, seeking vengeance & killing any Sikhs they came across. Two days after her death, most areas of my city were under total curfew as the flames of communal fire erupted in neighborhood after neighborhood.

HOME

We make this journey of life looking for a home – which actually appears to me is the place where we are loved – fully, wholeheartedly, just as we are. It doesn’t mean we don’t do the work – because finding home or love requires “home-work”. As Kahlil Gibran said “When love beckons to you follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.”

The Invisible String

I have never remembered my mother as much as I have in the past couple of years, nor have I missed her as much, nor have I channeled her as much.

When the time is right

“How on earth are we going to find any men if we never go on any dates?”
“The doorbell will ring, we will open the door and there they will be…”

My sister responded to my frustrated question with a grin, the gorgeous dimples on her cheeks deepening, her arm dramatically making the wide gesture of opening a door. She winked at me and added in her usual know-it-all attitude “….when the time is right.”

“Of course!” I said, rolling my eyes.

Go Back To Your Country (on the 20th anniversary of 9/11)

“Go back to your f***ing country” — the words hit me like ice-cold water. I stared unblinkingly at the speaker, unable to process the words directed at me. My face still wore the awkward smile it had when I had rolled down my window to better understand what the passengers in the car next to mine […]

Human No. 1

It was love at first sight. There she was, walking surreptitiously across the garden, up the steps of our deck, watching every movement around her; ready to scuttle away if I so much as breathed. She was tiny and I guessed no more than 6 weeks old. She was also skinny and wet and bedraggled, […]

Re-thinking Ginger Rogers

I am listening to my brilliant and menopausal acting coach as she goes through another oneof her hot flashes. “For a couple of minutes my brain shuts down. All I can think of is I amon fire. And I am panicking because I am in the middle of an audition which makes me feeleven hotter…“ […]

J.K. Rowling f***ing ruined my life

I stood in the corridor of a Delhi hospital watching the live feed of a Colonoscopy in progress. My sister; the love of my life, the red in my painting, the bread on my plate; was in the exam room getting a Colonoscopy. For the first few minutes of the procedure, everything had looked as […]

World War III is here, and we are asleep at the wheel

Our mindset is still locked in old forms of warfare, but a new form of war is right at our doorstep. Albert Einstein famously said, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”We know now that a key weapon […]

A Little Girl’s Odyssey

Once upon a time, there lived a little girl who dreamt to fly,
so very high
that…errrr…uhmmm… yes…very high indeed.

Little did she know, the highway to the stars was bumpy,
pitted and lumpy
this was told in some tales, the ones she didn’t’ read.

Say Her Name: Manisha Valmiki

The intersection of caste, class and gender make Dalit women the most unsafe women in India, their official rape figure of 10 rapes per day is NOWHERE near the truth. Another day, another gang-rape story. A victim, whose biggest fault is being a woman, in a culture that regards women as lesser humans. Several perpetrators, […]

1776 Words From an American Immigrant

My earliest “memory” of America is of my father telling me about the moon landing. “ John F Kennedy said we will put a man on the moon in 10 years and the Americans did it. “ As a little girl growing up in India, I imagined a country called America whose presidents were visionaries, whose people […]